Two men convicted “por la cara”: on eyewitness identification alone.
After a series of rapes in Catalonia in 1991, two Moroccan workers, Ahmed Tommouhi and Abderrazak Mounib, were convicted. In 1995 one of the real perpetrators, who strongly resembled Tommouhi, was arrested. It changed nothing in time: Mounib died in prison, Tommouhi served his full fifteen years, and evidence that could have freed them sat forgotten in laboratories in Madrid and Barcelona for decades.
Braulio García Jaén spent three years investigating it. Two editions: El caso de dos condenados por la cara (Seix Barral 2010, Premio Crónicas) and the updated Dos falsos culpables en un país de quijotes (Península).
One of Spain’s worst documented miscarriages of justice, and a study of how hard it is for a system to say “lo había calculado mal”.